Working Lunch: Lincoln Center Unveils Slanty Lawn

It was eighty-two degrees and sunny for the inaugural lunch hour at Lincoln Center’s new ten-thousand-square-foot roof lawn. Soon there will be a restaurant below, where meals prepared by Jonathan Benno, formerly of Per Se, will run about a hundred and thirty dollars a person. But on Friday, gelato and lemonade were free—which, judging by the looping line, was perhaps more exciting than the unveiling of the green turf.

Some ballet students sat on the slope, eating their purchases from the Juilliard cafeteria: a bagel with a thin layer of cream cheese (eighty cents) for Lauren Lovette, an apprentice at the New York City Ballet; and a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich (one dollar) for Jillian Harvey, a student at the School of American Ballet. They were glad to have a spot to sunbathe during lunch—though they kept on their socks and cropped tights. “I watched ‘Center Stage’ the other day, and this area used to be all cement,” remarked Harvey, who added that she doesn’t watch “Center Stage” all that regularly.

There was something before the concrete, too. In 1955, Robert Moses cleared blocks of the “slums” of the West Side to make way for Lincoln Center. Dwight D. Eisenhower praised the complex as a “great cultural adventure”—performance spaces and educational institutions all in a sixteen-acre mecca. But somewhere, as Alex Ross wrote in this magazine, that adventure went off-course:

Lincoln Center has never been able to foster an ideal cultural populace that delights equally in opera, ballet, and symphony…. Ensconced in the limestone fortress, they have become subspecies of ‘the performing arts,’ whose main characteristic, the curious onlooker might decide, is an edifying stuffiness.

It’s no surprise, then, that “warmth” and “intimacy” are words bandied about frequently in architects’ descriptions of how the renovation, which cost 1.2 million dollars, will change the space.

Shirley Dinitz remembers the early days. She has lived in her apartment, a few blocks from Lincoln Center, for fifty years. “That’s a show-off thing,” she said, gesturing at the lawn from her seat on a concrete bench—a relic!—across the plaza. Nodding to the reflecting pool, which was also spruced up, she added, “I’m not sure that’s not going to overflow.” Her husband, Leon, was incredulous about the lawn. “I doubt many people will sit there any time when you have seats like this,” he said, slapping the bench.

Elizabeth Balsam, a longtime volunteer for the New York City Opera and Ballet, carefully descending the grass-covered steps, said that “there aren’t too many gray-haired people up there—and those are the people who support all the concerts.” One gray-haired person missing from the scene: her husband, who told her he’d wait for her at the bottom.

But younger lawn-goers might resent the house rules. The security guard on duty had already had to stop a bunch of kids from rolling down the hill. No balls or Frisbees are allowed—and don’t even think about dipping your hands in the reflecting pool.

At 1:30 P.M., Juilliard graduates tumbled out of Alice Tully Hall, posed for the requisite cap-and-gown photographs, then steered their beaming families toward lunch—probably somewhere with proper chairs and perhaps air conditioning. David Moss, a violist who just earned his master’s degree, brought his parents to look at the lawn, which he felt “bittersweet” about getting to see just before he would return to Chicago. Would they dine on the slope? His father laughed and pointed to the Coors truck parked on the freshly repaved 65th Street. “Only if we can bring that up there.”